SPIT’N’SPLIT

Sa, 30.09. | 15:30

The film title is borrowed from porn language and describes preparation for anal sex: spit and push the butt cheeks apart. Nevertheless, SPIT’N’SPLIT is no fuck in the ass, even if it hurts a little and is pretty intense. Jérôme Vandewattyne toured with the Belgian band The Experimental Tropic Blues Band for weeks and months through the lowest imaginable concert locations, which everyone involved tries to deal with through a mixture of proletarian enthusiasm, self-irony, and desperation. The band’s blues, rock and punk numbers provide the sound-storm for the images, sometimes recorded like a documentary journal, sometimes going off track in analogy to the drunkenness, and repeatedly losing themselves in the moment, attempting to convey the madness that happens with color filters and other eccentric elements of style. The longer the journey continues, the more surreal it becomes: a heavy-weight transvestite squirting milch (?) from his breasts and offering it around as a drink, is hardly even conspicuous here. With SPIT’N’SPLIT Vandewattyne has achieved one of the most extraordinary midnight movies of recent years: a road trip on the way to self-dissolution, carried by the animated music of the protagonists, who eventually start hating themselves and kick open the door to darkness. The film rushes in, head held high, to make our brains melt. It hurts, is beautiful, and is over far too soon.